TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The latest report issued by The Economist Intelligence Unit touted The Safe Cities Index 2021 has ranked the capital city of Jakarta at 46th with an overall score of 56.4, which is below average of 66.1.

In the Southeast Asian region, Jakarta also ranked below Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, which ranked 32nd and Singapore that ranks a high third. This report measures the safety levels of 60 cities in the world through a scoring system based on four indicators: digital security, healthcare, infrastructure, individual safety, and environment.

Based on the data, Jakarta scored the lowest in the digital security factor and only managed to score 38.0, entering the bottom three on the list.

Jakarta only managed to score high in terms of environmental security by scoring 73.7, placing it at 30th.

The Economist Intelligence Unit report placed Copenhagen as the world’s safest city at 82.4, with he lowest scoring city being Yangon in Myanmar with 39.5.

In conclusion, the report deemed the COVID-19 pandemic has driven the broader city safety agenda in at least four ways. The most obvious is that the disease has posed dangers to the health of urban residents, especially people who are older or have underlying medical conditions.

Second, it has forcefully reminded us of dangers that the success against infectious disease had allowed many to ignore for some time: as biological organisms, humans need cities with a wide range of assets, including not just healthcare, but also those related to infrastructure and the environment, in order to deal with the multi-faceted problems arising when microbes attack.

Third, this ongoing blink in history has alerted us to risks arising from what we are becoming: as lockdowns have accelerated technological and social trends, it has become clear that many cities remain unprepared for at least some of the resultant vulnerabilities. Finally, it has led The Economist to think about the kind of cities we want to live in, a reconsideration that, in turn, has led us to reassess longer term dangers in the way of achieving safe, sustainable, liveable cities as well as opportunities for getting there.

Read: Jakarta Ranks 10th on World's Most Congested Cities List

M YUSUF MANURUNG | The Economist